


The Draw of Danger

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cryptids, Developing Relationship, M/M, Supernatural Hunters, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27325441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Claude is absolutely convinced that there's something up with the house at the end of his road. Specifically, he's sure it's haunted in some way. But when he goes to investigate it, the decidedly creepy inhabitant is insistent that nothing is wrong.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 41
Collections: Fodlan Frights Halloween Exchange 2020





	The Draw of Danger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaleidosphere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaleidosphere/gifts).



> This is my piece for the Fodlan Frights gift exchange! It was an absolute blast to write and I had a lot of fun getting it down on the page.

"I'm telling you, there's definitely something there!"

Claude was sure. He knew it, even, yet Yuri didn't look at all impressed. Instead, he quirked an eyebrow at him and just... smiled.

"You're almost certainly imagining it," he said. "I've lived here for a pretty long time. Longer than you, certainly."

"There's just something weird about the house at the end of the road," he said. He'd felt it, every time he walked past the place. He  _ knew.  _

"Weird people live in this area," Yuri said with a shrug. "Weird people live in every area. It's just a house, and it's really not a big deal. At the most, they grow weed there. That's all."

"I am absolutely, one hundred percent, completely certain that it's something more than that," he argued. "Something creepy."

"Why?" The disbelief in Yuri's voice was equal parts cute and funny.

Claude raised his hand, counting on his fingers as he went. "Flickering lights coming from the inside," he began, "loud noises,  _ creepy  _ noises, and also Eris refuses to go anywhere near the house."

Yuri laughed. "Eris is a dog, Claude. She doesn't know anything about... whatever you're suggesting here. The paranormal is just a collection of folktales and hearsay, and you're para _ noid. _ Don't worry your pretty little head."

Claude frowned. Yuri was a great housemate, but he definitely didn't know what he was talking about here. This wasn't fake; it was something. Something big, maybe, and that meant he had to find out exactly what it was.

-

With no ally in Yuri, Claude had no choice but to head to the house alone. It was probably easier this way anyway, but he'd half hoped that he would understand. Ah well.

He waited for night to fall before he went. Sure, it was a little risky, but he was dealing with the supernatural here. Monsters didn't come out during the day, so there was no point in going while the sun was still up.

It wasn't like there was any real  _ danger -  _ the closer Claude got, the more he realised that the house just looked... abandoned. The grass of the garden was overgrown, thistles climbing the rotting fence. The porch creaked under his feet, and the gate stuck slightly when he swung it open. If he didn't know better, he'd assume that there was no one here at all.

But he did know better, so he ran his usual tests for checking out potentially haunted residences: he scanned for traces of magic, reaching deep within himself to feel for any presence. Nothing in the garden, but a significant amount radiating from the house itself. At least everything currently pointed in the direction that he  _ wasn't  _ imagining the house's creepiness.

With that done, he did his other usual check - blood. Sure, most creatures didn't mean anyone too much harm; a little light mood draining, maybe some influencing of the local environment to adapt things to their needs. But some of them  _ did  _ hurt people. Some of them had to, and Claude needed to know what he was dealing with here.

Fortunately, there didn't seem to be anything sinister at all. Just a lot of rat droppings.

Sighing and hoping for the best, Claude made his way towards the house's back door. The steps up to the back made an ominous sound when he put his foot down on them, but it seemed more like structural insecurity than anything actually concerning. The worst he'd get was a sprained ankle.

The house itself, though, or an inhabitant... Claude knocked on the back door and waited for any reaction. Nothing magical pushed back and no one came to deny him entry; a good sign. Just to be safe, he threw salt over his left shoulder and brought his left hand up to place his fingertips against the Seiros figure slung around his neck.

Claude didn't believe in the Goddess, but a lot of the fouler creatures of Fodlan did. Better safe than sorry.

Though, when it came to "better safe", Claude could probably acknowledge that he should have done a little more research before he came here. Either way, he was ready now - with every precaution he could think to take now secured, he climbed in through the window, listening out for the crunch of glass on the other side.

He landed about as deftly as someone cloud when breaking into a hopefully mostly abandoned house, and there didn't seem to be anyone there to greet him. The house was dark, just as he anticipated - there were no lights on, and he had to rely on the sweep of torchlight to illuminate much of it.

The first thing he noticed was that the whole place looked suspiciously lived in. The cushions on the sofa were a little askew, an undeniable dent in them visible even in torchlight, and a book rested on the mantelpiece. There was no dust on it.

He supposed, hypothetically, that it wouldn't be entirely out of the way for some homeless people to live here. The house was  _ mostly  _ abandoned but also mostly secure; the windows on the upper floor still had glass in them, he'd noted, which meant it could stay mostly warm and dry up there.

Though if this was nothing, if it was just a couple of people with nowhere else to go, Claude would feel very, very bad for intruding. Maybe he'd woken someone up, maybe someone would feel unsafe because of his presence. He very nearly turned to leave right then and there, when he accidentally brushed his back trouser pocket against a (again, clean) kitchen countertop. Something crunched.

Claude frowned, stepped forwards, and reached into his pocket. He kept his torch and eyes firmly fixed ahead, his heart beating faster. Why this, of all things, had sparked fear, he didn't know. But he couldn't let his guard down.

The flower, freshly picked only half an hour before, had wilted. More than that; it had dried out, its petals now taking on a faint brown tinge visible even in the flat light of his torch. There had to be something here.

He poked around the house a little more, trying to take note of any useful details; not much in the fridge, just a lot of meat.  _ Fortunately  _ all of that was still in the packaging that told him it was entirely legitimately sourced. There was a little mould on the curtains in the downstairs bedroom, but no sign of anyone sleeping in the bed. Claude moved on to the bathroom, half expecting something incredibly normal to greet him, when his heart rate increased.

There was something behind him. Something that made adrenaline spike in his chest, something that made his mind scream at him to  _ run. _

So, because Claude hadn't listened to his smarter thoughts for a single day in his life, he turned around.

There was a man there. And, despite the way that fear physically spiked in Claude's chest, the pain undeniable, he looked... incredibly nondescript. Dark, messy hair framed a face that looked only very slightly paler than was normal in torchlight. There were no glowing red eyes or slit pupils - just brown and very unimpressed ones.

The nondescript plaid-and-jeans-at-three-in-the-morning man frowned at him. "Any reason you're intruding here?" he asked. He crossed his arms over his chest, and Claude did  _ not  _ like the way his heart responded to that.

"Oh, you know," he said, punctuating his words with a laugh. The stranger simply fixed him with a look, telling him what they both already knew: he didn't 'know'. "I thought this place was abandoned and also maaaaybe haunted?"

The man just rolled his eyes. "It's not," he said. "On either count. This place is creaky, but I've lived here for years. No haunting. So you can leave now."

Claude nodded. Every part of his body was screaming at him to leave, but he knew now that there was absolutely, definitely something up with this person. The more time he spent here, the closer he got to working out exactly what it was. "If you don't want people to think it's haunted, you should probably fix up the house a bit." As he spoke, he leaned against one of the walls, trying to feign something close to a relaxed posture. "It kinda looks like a wreck on the outside. Do you even mow your lawn?"

"Mowing lawns is bad for the health of the grass," the man informed him. Which was true, yes, but also entirely besides the point of making the house look not-abandoned. "Get out."

It wasn't like it was cold inside, not by any description. But when the man spoke those words, a chill ran through Claude's blood. He didn't know if he could push this creature much further without tipping him over the edge. "Alright, alright!" he said, hurriedly making his way towards the door. He tried not to turn his back to the man for too long. "But seriously, you'll totally get rats if you don't tend to your garden."

The man slammed the door in his face. Back out in the fresh air of their sleepy street, Claude shivered. Hey, at least he was right about the house containing something supernatural; now he just had to work out if it was sinister too.

-

Yuri told him summarily that whoever lived in that house was probably just a hermit, someone no one ever really saw, but Claude wasn't so certain. There was no denying what he felt when he was in that house, when he came face to face with the creature. That wasn't the kind of reaction that someone with as much experience as him had to just a normal person, even if he  _ looked  _ as mundane as anything.

There was something wrong, and Claude was going to find out what it was. So, two days later, he visited again - during the day this time, armed with a foolproof weapon against a fair number of town-dwelling creatures: garlic and coriander biscuits.

"What are you doing here?" the man asked, the moment he opened the front door. Honestly, Claude was surprised he even answered to a knock. "Go away."

Claude felt the jelly-like feeling from a few nights before returning to his legs, but he stood firm. "Nope," he said. "I still think you're haunted, and in my  _ professional  _ opinion, I think you need some company."

"Professional?" the man asked, his eyes narrowed. Claude smiled as sweetly as he could. "Fine." He opened the door a little wider and stepped back. Huh, that was easier than Claude thought it would be. Clearly he'd caught the meaning to his words; or maybe the scent of garlic from the plate.

Unfortunately for the progress of his investigation, the man took one of the biscuits almost the moment Claude placed them down on the coffee table. Not a vampire, then. "So," he said. "You're here for something. Keep me  _ company,  _ if you must."

Claude laughed, desperately trying to ignore the edge to the man's tone. "I guess we could start by getting to know each other?" He didn't often get to the interviewing part of a creature hunt; normally he got attacked before then. But this creature was clearly playing it safe, and now he got to do one of the fun bits.

"If that's what you want."

"Absolutely," he said with a smile, running through all the rules in his head. First up - no creature in their right mind would give him their real name, so he should do the same in return. "Well, I'm Claude. It's nice to meet you."

"Felix," he replied, without even a beat of silence. Felix. A surprisingly normal name, for someone living in Fódlan, if a little outmoded - perhaps something picked many years ago, or based on someone he once knew.

Then again, Claude had no idea how old Felix was. For all he knew, he could be ancient (though with the way he dressed, he probably wasn't). "So how did you come to live in this creepy, run-down house?"

"It's clearly only creepy to you," Felix replied, very noticeably dodging the question.

"And my dog," Claude added. "She hates this place. Every time we walk past, she's petrified. Non-literally, of course."

"Of course." Skies above, Felix was toying with him, wasn't he? Maybe letting on that he knew at least roughly what he was doing was a bad idea - Felix was undeniably on guard.

"Why  _ don't  _ you fix this place up, then?" he tried.

Felix shrugged. "I can live in it fine," he said. "There's not really much wrong with it."

"There's no glass in your back windows downstairs," Claude shot back.

"I like the breeze."

"It'll let in the damp. There's mould on your curtains."

"I don't spend that much time down here. You just forced my hand a little." As he spoke, Felix reached for another biscuit. Hey, at least he was getting the guy to eat something that wasn't red meat.

His eagerness to eat, however, also meant that he  _ definitely  _ wasn't a vampire. One biscuit could be dismissed as a tolerance, but two... well, Claude was maybe a little over-eager with the garlic. There was no way someone with any kind of garlic sensitivity could still be so sharp-eyed after two.

Felix wasn't forthcoming with any other answers, either. He dodged around anything even remotely personal and even managed to avoid Claude's more subtle trap of trying to push Felix into demanding answers to questions himself - information could be exchanged, of course, but if Felix gave and demanded nothing there was nowhere to go.

Once they polished off the plate of biscuits, Claude stood to leave. The anxiety that mounted in his chest when he first saw Felix had subsided a little, but that didn't mean he wanted to spend a lot of time in his presence. He still set him undeniably on edge, and it wasn't at all good for his blood pressure.

"I'll see you another time," he said, offering Felix a smile at the door.

Felix didn't smile back. "Don't bother," he answered, but at least he didn't close the door quite so sharply this time.

Claude let out a shuddering sigh. Still no closer to the truth, not really. Even with one option ruled out, there were still plenty more to go. Felix was good at this game.

-

Felix's expression when he opened the door was the most unimpressed one so far. Claude almost counted it as a victory, that paint and gardening equipment could piss him off more than a midnight intruder, but also he really didn't want Felix to turn him away here.

"Fancy a hand fixing up your house?" he asked. He offered up the cheeriest smile he could muster, trying to ignore Felix's returning frown as best he could. Ignorance was a virtue, especially if it was feigned.

Then again, he didn't know how much - if any - of his act was fooling Felix. So he supposed he just had to keep it up until he called his bluff.

"Fine," Felix grumbled. "If my garden offends you  _ that  _ much, you can do it, but I'm not paying you."

"Sure, you don't have to pay me in money," Claude said, "but also I brought you biscuits last time. So if you could pay me back with your impeccable company, I'd be very glad."

Felix scoffed, but he didn't say a word. Maybe both of them knew that, actually, Felix's 'company' felt like nails being driven into every point of Claude's chest, but he didn't pull him up on it.

And yeah, maybe it was slightly stupid to spend so much time with Felix when his presence tried undeniably to keep people away. It definitely meant that Felix, behind his jeans ripped at the knees and his obnoxiously patterned shirt, was dangerous. But danger was cool and Claude had always been told that his self-preservation instincts in solo hunts left a lot to be desired.

Silence reigned between them for a while, Claude keeping his eyes firmly on Felix. Felix wasn't one to make eye contact, but Claude had no idea what that meant - his eyes were normal, and he'd never heard of a creature that avoided the eyes of others (unless, of course, he thought Claude's eyes had bewitching powers, but Claude didn't want to think about that).

"Fine," Felix said eventually, shuffling out of sight for just a moment, reappearing with shoes that had probably been in fashion ten years ago. And then, without even a moment of hesitation, he stepped outside. Well, that ruled out a lot of things too - there were plenty of creatures averse to sunlight, and Claude had almost been convinced that Felix was one of them.

He was also convinced that, whatever Felix was, he'd make the plants shrivel up around him. That was what had happened to the little flower he'd brought with him to his first investigation, and the second. But when he snuck a look over, it seemed like the opposite was true. Sure, Claude could have been imagining things, but it sort of looked like the flowers were leaning  _ towards  _ him. Like he was the sun or something.

Okay, that was a weird thought that he definitely needed to stop in its tracks. It was just that the late autumn heat was messing with his head a little, or maybe it was Felix's ambient magic levels. They were pretty high, higher than Claude was used to dealing with on a daily basis.

Though maybe it was just that all of Claude's self preservation instincts flew out of the window when he was around Felix which, hey, that was concerning, and he should maybe care a little more about it. He didn't even know  _ why,  _ or why he kept coming back. Felix wasn't even pleasant, he was just-

Oh. Oh, that was it. Felix was attractive, and Claude was weak for dark, mysterious strangers. Always had been, and he'd been told on numerous occasions that it would get him into trouble some day. Maybe that day was now.

But it wasn't  _ just  _ that Felix was attractive. He was also... as he worked, he fumbled around a little. He dropped things, cursed quietly (and Claude never quite caught what it was he cursed, which was more annoying than anything else), and he was just generally sort of cute, in a goofy and incompetent way.

Wow, that sounded really bad even in his head. How had he become so besotted so quickly?

It only got worse as Claude kept coming back. They moved from pruning the plants in the garden to setting up a small spot where the animals that had taken residence in the brambles could live, and then they moved to fixing up the porch. Felix insisted on leaving the windows without glass, but he helped Claude repaint some of the wood, and then they planted some new stuff in the garden.

Basically, they spent a lot of time together, and as they did so they got a lot closer. It was possible for Claude to draw a smile or two out of Felix in the course of a day, and the prickliness in his words faded.

Alongside it, so did the edge to Felix's magic. What had once set him decidedly on edge and left the taste of something sour in his mouth now barely bothered him at all; it was just a little pressure in the back of his mind. Something he was aware of, something that felt a little spiky (which, honestly, fit Felix down to the last word), but not something he wanted to avoid.

Claude was aware that maybe Felix was  _ making  _ him let his guard down. After all, he was an undisclosed creature of undisclosed (but undoubtedly large) power. Maybe he was malicious, and all of this was just to make Claude into easier prey.

But the moment he even thought about it, Claude found that he didn't really care. He was enjoying himself with Felix - was there anything wrong with that, at the end of the day?

-

Just over two weeks of pleasant afternoons later, they finished up their work on the house and garden. Neither of them were particularly professional or skilled, so maybe it didn't look amazing, but it was pretty good. A whole ton better than it was before.

As they stood there, admiring the fruits of their work, Claude couldn't help but feel... sad. With Felix's house all fixed up, he technically didn't have much of an excuse to visit anymore. Sure, he'd probably think of some anyway (and already he was trying to fabricate one or two), but for now their association was at an end.

He still hadn't figured out  _ what  _ Felix was, exactly, but he'd stopped trying at some point, unwilling to pry too much in case he discovered something he didn't like. He was kind of bad at this whole urban monster hunting thing, actually.

"We did a good job," Claude said with a smile, turning to Felix. Felix, surprisingly enough, smiled back. "Now it doesn't look so much like you're being haunted, huh?"

Felix chuckled. "Yeah, now it looks like a real person lives here."

"Well, mostly anyway," he shot back, his eyes landing on the empty window panes. "Either way, my work here is done. See you around, Felix." He turned to go, trying to ignore the prickle in his chest. He was  _ not  _ meant to get feelings about temporary goodbyes from potentially bloodthirsty creatures.

"Wait." Felix's voice was slightly shaky, unsure. "Hold still a moment."

Claude laughed. "Why?" he asked, but he did as Felix said. Anything to stick around for just a moment longer.

That was when his back hit the wall, Felix's hands planted against his shoulders. Claude blinked; Felix was now very, very close. His lips were close enough to-

Oh, that was what was going on here. Felix wasn't looking directly at him, but he didn't need to be. Claude just nodded, and lips crashed into his.

There was an energy to it, sharp and strong. For a moment, something in the back of Claude's mind told him that he was about to die, but nothing happened. Well, nothing except Felix kissing him, insistent and heavy, most of his body finding some way to press Claude ever more up against the wall.

When Felix pulled back, Claude blinked. He felt maybe the tiniest bit dazed, which he hadn't anticipated. Then again, he should have known to expect the unexpected with Felix by now. Apparently that included him being very good at kissing. "So," he said, ignoring the slightly faraway sound in his tone. He could unpack that later. "Are you going to tell me what you are now?"

Felix just grinned. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

And okay, sure, that was frustrating. But it was also exciting. He had no idea what kind of creature Felix was, basically no more than he did when he first encountered him, but he didn't really mind. All he knew was that Felix was  _ absolutely  _ the hottest urban creature he'd ever hunted down, and he had no desire to have all the answers just yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed, leaving a comment is very much appreciated. I also have a twitter over @samariumwriting, where I talk about fic and other things :)


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